Creating a Church for ALL

Recognizing & Including People along the Full Spectrum of Abilities

NPC is blessed to have Michelle Munger, her husband Steven, and their sons Joshua and Matthias among us! We love them, and we’re learning from them as we seek to follow God’s plan to prepare ourselves and our facilities to welcome many kinds of special needs.

Joshua and Matthias were diagnosed with autistism when they were very young. Steven and Michelle’s dreams of serving in church ministries have been shaped by the joys and struggles of being parents to their very special sons.

Michelle led us in this 4-hour workshop on November 12, 2016. Anyone who is interested in inviting Michelle to present this material for their church can email our church office at office@northamptonpres.com or call us at 757-826-1305. Michelle’s website: Candle’s Flame.

A video with Barbara Newman

Post-video discussion and communication strategies

Following Barbara Newman’s video, we shared what things stood out to us; we weren’t able to capture the discussion in our recording, but you can hear Michelle’s comments about her experiences as a military family wanting to participate in church with two autistic sons. Then she talked about communication strategies especially for people with special needs (download the handout). A few minutes of this part are missing, because the recording computer crashed. She closes this session with reflections on the worth of all people, equally created in God’s image–irrespective of disabilities–and the place of special-needs ministries in the church context.

Lunch

We ate lunch with the whole Munger family and enjoyed the opportunity to ask Joshua and Matthias to do small tasks. The boys were happy to help, and we discovered that we needed to think carefully about communicating exactly what we wanted.

NPC Disability Inclusion Plan

Michelle sketched some ways that all of NPC’s ministry teams can help us become accessible to all. (Download the handout.)